Do Not Disturb

Work and life are not separate things and therefore cannot be balanced against each other except to create further trouble.

David Whyte

This morning I wake eager to step into the unfettered time I have set aside for the task of writing. The house is quiet; the sky a soothing grey. I settle into stillness, and the phone rings. I keep my phone on silent, but happen to see the screen as I get up, and realise it is a call I have to take. Several messages and three calls later I feel the previously-tranquil edges of my mind fraying. Then, just as I finish hanging out the washing, it starts to pour with rain. Interruptions both quotidian and distressing have unraveled my plans.

Two months ago, in a previous post, I quoted these words from Mary Oliver:

It is six A.M., and I am working. I am absentminded, reckless, heedless of social obligations, etc. It is as it must be. The tire goes flat, the tooth falls out, there will be a hundred meals without mustard. The poem gets written. I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I have no shame. Neither do I have guilt.

In the post I reflected on my need for solitude, the importance of creating the boundaries necessary to do the work, that these boundaries enable me to enlarge my capacity to give with integrity and grace. But... sometimes the phone calls come, the neighbour knocks at the gate, rain pours down on the washing. I feel frustration as a tension in my jaw, discouragement a tightness in my chest. I sense a resistance, a resentment towards life as something getting in the way.

I find Whyte's thoughts helpful, especially the word against. I often experience my life, with all its demands and responsibilities (even its joys), as something in opposition to my creative work. The words balanced and against remind me of a scale, associated with notions of evaluation, judgement. And I realise it's all of a piece - the creative work, the difficult phone calls, the mundane and the heartbreaking, the planned and the unforeseen.

I have no way to tie these thoughts up neatly. I need boundaries, and I want to be open to life. Sometimes my days flow, and sometimes I feel like I move from one interruption to another. A lot of the time it's just messy. I have no unifying philosophy, let alone strategy, for navigating all the complexity. There are times, I guess, when I just have to choose, and trust. I leave the washing in the rain, and give myself to my words.

P.S. You will find a poem by Wendell Berry at this week's Cloudlight, one that speaks to the challenges of tangled thoughts, and that I find encouraging on mornings like this.